Cleopatra eBook

In the mean time, Caesar soon found himself in a somewhat
embarrassing situation at Alexandria. He had
been accustomed, for many years, to the possession
and the exercise of the most absolute and despotic
power, wherever he might be; and now that Pompey,
his great rival, was dead, he considered himself the
monarch and master of the world. He had not,
however, at Alexandria, any means sufficient to maintain
and enforce such pretensions, and yet he was not of
a spirit to abate, on that account, in the slightest
degree, the advancing of them. He established
himself in the palaces of Alexandria as if he were
himself the king. He moved, in state, through
the streets of the city, at the head of his guards,
and displaying the customary emblems of supreme authority
used at Rome. He claimed the six thousand talents
which Ptolemy Auletes had formerly promised him for
procuring a treaty of alliance with Rome, and he called
upon Pothinus to pay the balance due. He said,
moreover, that by the will of Auletes the Roman people
had been made the executor; and that it devolved upon
him as the Roman consul, and, consequently, the representative
of the Roman people, to assume that trust, and in the
discharge of it to settle the dispute between Ptolemy
and Cleopatra, and he called upon Ptolemy to prepare
and lay before him a statement of his claims, and
the grounds on which he maintained his right to the
throne to the exclusion of Cleopatra.

On the other hand, Pothinus, who had been as little
accustomed to acknowledge a superior as Caesar, though
his supremacy and domination had been exercised on
a somewhat humbler scale, was obstinate and pertinacious
in resisting all these demands, though the means and
methods which he resorted to were of a character corresponding
to his weak and ignoble mind. He fomented quarrels
in the streets between the Alexandrian populace and
Caesar’s soldiers. He thought that, as the
number of troops under Caesar’s command in the
city, and of vessels in the port, was small, he could
tease and worry the Romans with impunity, though he
had not the courage openly to attack them. He
pretended to be a friend, or, at least, not an enemy,
and yet he conducted himself toward them in an overbearing
and insolent manner. He had agreed to make arrangements
for supplying them with food, and he did this by procuring
damaged provisions of a most wretched quality; and
when the soldiers remonstrated, he said to them, that
they who lived at other people’s cost had no
right to complain of their fare. He caused wooden
and earthen vessels to be used in the palace, and
said, in explanation, that he had been compelled to
sell all the gold and silver plate of the royal household
to meet the exactions of Caesar. He busied himself,
too, about the city, in endeavoring to excite odium
against Caesar’s proposal to hear and decide
the question at issue between Cleopatra and Ptolemy.
Ptolemy was a sovereign, he said, and was not amenable
to any foreign power whatever. Thus, without